Lagniappe: Bonaire

10/19/2017 Greg returned to Grenada on 10/11/2017 but I had to wait a week due to cataract surgery. Even postponing my return until 10/17, I still did not have my contacts for the non-surgical eye thanks to UPS screw up. After much frustration and anxiety, we managed to have the lenses shipped to friends in Texas who were returning to Martinique at the end of the month. Since we had planned to go up to Martinique to get a better wind angle to head to Bonaire, that worked out for us. We launched the boat on 10/19 and anchored in Clarke’s Court Bay. Winds were up and we had a rain squall that delayed the launch a couple of hours but it went smoothly and we were glad to be back on the boat. We spent our days provisioning, doing laundry, installing the new chartplotter and repairing the stackpack. We had both propane tanks filled and headed out to Carriacou.

Finally made it to Nimrod’s, the famous cruiser’s bar. Greg had a chicken roti there which he proclaimed the best he’s had anywhere.

Celebrating Elliott Haynes' 18th birthday at West Indies Brewery in Grenada

So sad to say goodbye to great friends, Bill and Joanna on S/V Baidarka

10/27/2017 We left Clarke’s Court Bay and had some rough and rolly seas on the south side of Grenada until we got a couple miles off the coast. Then we had a nice sail around the southern tip of the island. We lost the wind on the west side so we ran the engine and made water. We discovered the AIS was not transmitting our signal although we could receive other signals. We anchored in Tyrrel Bay, Carriacou and checked out the next day.
10/31/2017 We had a short day sail (2 1/2 hours) to Chatham Bay on Union island. We had not stopped here before but it made a convenient stop to stage for our overnight passage to Martinique the next day. We yellow-flagged for the night and headed out the next morning for Martinique.
11/1/2017 We left Chatham Bay at 0745 and first went out and made circles to calibrate the fluxgate compass with the new chartplotter.We had good winds from the east of about 10 knots and sailed making about 5 knots until we got into the lee of St. Vincent when what little wind there was (about 3 knots) turned to the west just like we experienced the last time we sailed south along St. Vincent. We fired up the engine for about 2 hours and then by 1800 we were back to sailing with a reefed main, jib and staysail making 5.2 knots. There was a 1.6 knot current against us too.Around midnight we lost the wind again and had to motorsail the rest of the way. We arrived in Le Marin, Martinique about 0835 and anchored and then crashed for some much needed sleep. While in Le Marin, we got Liz Ann’s contacts from RIta and Ralph on S/V Calypso, bought a new GPS antenna for the AIS and installed it and did some provisioning of French wine and cheese and rum. St. James rum in a box—very convenient on the boat. We finalized our plans for the passage to Bonaire and cooked meals ahead of time. It is about a 465 mile passage and as we average 5 knots, we figured 93 hours, our longest passage yet.

Lunch with Greig and Caroline and Ralph and Rita

Dinner on our boat with Greig and Caroline
Heading to Bonaire:
11/7/2017 We pulled up anchor at 0745 and headed out the channel, raising the mainsail and setting out the jib for a wing and wing run. We sailed like this most of the morning. We made good speed, staying between 6 and 7 knots. Around 1330, we furled the jib about 75% of the way and closed our little plastic side curtains as we had a squall hit with about 25 knot winds and pelting rain. It didn’t last long and then we sailed on a broad reach on port tack. By 1500 the wind was down to 8 knots and with it behind us, we could only make 3 knots. We ran the engine and made water for about 1 1/2 hours and then charged the batteries for another half hour. By 1700 we were sailing again but it was very rolly and uncomfortable. The night was quiet with no squalls on radar but cloud to cloud lightning in the distance.

Wing and wing the first morning

The second day of the passage was much like the first with lots of rolling thanks to the seas on the quarter and a squall around 1700 that brought rain and 24 knot winds for about 5 minutes and then took away most of the wind. We turned the engine on for a half hour to charge the batteries for the night. Despite our solar panels and wind generator, the refrigeration and the constant use of the autohelm tend to run the batteries down.The second evening was uneventful but we were both tired and not feeling very well thanks to the constant rolling from side to side. The third day and night passed with us averaging 6.5 knots and me beginning to feel better but Greg feeling worse. About 0400 on 11/10 we reached our waypoint which was 30 miles north of Aves de Sotavento off the coast of Venezuela where we turned south to go along the eastern coast of Bonaire. After reading Frank Virgintino’s guide to the ABC’s and reading up on the Caribbean safety and security net and talking to other cruisers, we knew we needed to stay far off the coast of Venezuela and didn’t turn south until we were north of the last of the islands before Bonaire. We had a fast trip down the eastern side of Bonaire with some rough seas but not rolling us as it did when they were behind us. When we reached the southeastern tip of Bonaire and turned to head up the western side to Kralendijk, the seas were gone but we still had wind and it was the best sailing of the whole trip. Two hours later we found a mooring in the mooring field and picked it up. We were tied up at 1354 on 11/10/2017! We had made it from Martinique to Bonaire in 78 hours! Great time for our little boat. And the timing worked out so we arrived in daylight! Life is good again.

View of the salt pans as we appraoched Bonaire

The "Old Salt" after 3 plus days at sea

We went to check in at Customs and Immigration but they asked us to come back the next day because the Immigration people were not there. The marina people who manage the moorings also told us to check in with them the next morning. When we got back to the boat, we discovered one of the mooring lines had broken (they are double lines with a ball on each) so we moved to another mooring. We got all checked in the next day and reported the broken mooring line to the marina. (Not that they fixed it until 2 weeks later.)

We absolutely LOVED Bonaire. The water is CLEAN, beautiful blue and full of fish and coral. We snorkeled almost everyday and could even snorkel right off the boat in the mooring field. We went over to Klein Bonaire, a very small island about 1/2 mile to the west several times and snorkeled there too. The town is clean and there are well stocked grocery stores with reasonable prices. We rented a truck (required if you want to go in the park) for 3 days and visited the donkey sanctuary, saw the salt pans, snorkeled on the southeastern side at Red Beryl and had lunch at Foodies.

The water is SOOO Blue!

Karel's waterfront restaurant where we use the dinghy dock. The old Dutch buildings are so pretty.

Another pretty little house with the fishing boat out front just in front of where we were moored.

The salt pans on the southern part of the island. Salt is a big part of the economy here.

One of the white slave huts built for the original salt pan workers

The red slave huts

There were four different areas for ships to come in to get the salt. They were divided according to the quality of the salt to be loaded on the ship and identified by four different colors: red, white, blue and orange.

Flamingos in the bays

Lighthouse near the southern end of the island

Greg and Greig searching for rocks to use as dinghy anchors as we can't use real anchors in Bonaire

Flamingo in the salt marsh

windmill for pumping water into the salt pans

The Donkey Sanctuary

They have made ingenious devices for the donkeys to scratch themselves

Trying to get in the car window

They all have a squiggly black line down their backs

The donkeys liked Caroline

Really gnarly old tree on the sanctuary

More flamingos on the way to Foodies restaurant

Egrets too

Another day we went to the Washington Slagbaii National Park and nearly jarred our fillings out driving on the rutted tracks there. But we saw geological formations, flamingos, caves, iguanas and birds and on the way back we stopped and saw the Indian Inscriptions on some cave walls. We also stopped at the goat farm which supposedly sells great goat cheese but they were closed and didn’t have any cheese anyway.

Pretty house on the way to the park

A cactus tree on a little hike we took before we got to the park

The Tolo caves on the way to the Park

A cactus fence, common on Bonaire

The sand dunes in the park

Large boulders tossed up by storms

Layers of rock forced up by tectonic plates moving

One area we hiked in had loads of iguanas

A whiptail lizard, very colorful

The iguanas seemd to think the tab on Greg's sandals looked appetizing

An old lighthouse and keeper's house

Hawks perched on a cactus

More flamingos

After leaving the park area we drove by some caves with inscriptions that had been done by the ancient "Indians"

Must be lots of copper in these rocks to make the blue-green color

The hole in the roof of the cave that the Indians used to predict certain weather events

The third day of our car rental, we drove up to a snorkel/dive site called 1000 steps which everyone raves about. Unfortunately, it was getting a bit rough that day and the water was stirred up and very cloudy. We saw very little fish life and minimal coral.

This was a pretty blue-green coral we had not seen before

Each dive/snorkel site is marked by a yellow painted rock with the name of the site

We were joined for lunch by some fearless iguanas

We stopped at a couple of other snorkel sites along the coast but the water was rough and we decided not to go in. We went on to GOTO lake to see the flamingos and stopped at the Cadushy distillery in Rincon where they use cactus to make various liquers and some rum.

Along the northwest coast

Goto Lake

More flamingos

A Plover

We snorkeled several times, had lunch at the Arrepa shack on Coco Beach and had dinner one night at the marina for the $8 burger dinner night with half price drinks. We had a crowd of about 26 of us and had a fun night.
We had pot luck at Brita Seipker’s apartment twice while here. We had first met Brita in Warderick Wells, Bahamas when she was on Blue Moon. We then saw them in Grenada for a couple of seasons and now she is off the boat but back in Bonaire working on her divemaster certification. It was a great chance to catch up with her and meet lots of the other cruisers here. Most of the other boaters are divers and this is definitely a diver’s paradise.

Our first potluck at Brita's

Our second potluck at Brita's

Greg at the "conning tower"" of the submarine tour boat

We also visited the local Terra Mar Museum which had a good exhibit on the marine environment and the history of Bonaire with audio self-guided tours in English. The last weekend there, we got to see the arrival of SinterKlaus and the Black Peets (the mischievous elves who are black from the soot in the chimneys.) The children come to watch the arrival and parade and dress like the Peets. This is a Dutch tradition.

We also met some nice folks from Montreal on Eaudree 96 who invited us over for happy hour one evening. Before we could go, we had to get rid of an uninvited guest on our dinghy.